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the brit awards
Awards season is upon us - I'm not a fan. But I did catch some of the Golden Globes last night (my wife is a fan, you see), and wow, what a night for the Brits! I suspect that Hugh Laurie, who got the same award as last year for his role in House, in which he dons an American accent, received his award just because Americans love hearing him speak in his British voice for a change - they are suckers for that, you see. It didn't stop there. Bill Nighy got one, as did Emily Blunt, both for Gideon's Daughter, whoever she might be. Jeremy Irons got one, for his role in the TV film Elizabeth I. Helen Mirren got two, one for her role as Elizabeth I, and one for her role as Elizabeth II (I thought it was a sequel). that has to be a first, surely - winning best actress twice in one night, one for film, one for TV, both times portraying a different Queen Bess. They love the Brits. Mirren was up against, in the Best Film Actress category, Judi Dench (a former Queen Elizabeth Oscar winner for her one token gimme-an-Oscar line in Shakespeare in Love), and Kate Winslett (who, let's face it, will be playing Elizabeth I one day herself). The Queen's screenwriting team also got awards, and Elizabeth I got best TV mini-series, but the conquest was topped off when Sacha Baron Cohen won an award as Best Film Actor (in a comedy) for Borat, the surprise massive hit in the US. Again, I think people just wanted to hear him speak (as he very rarely does so as himself), and he didn't disappoint, going on about having his portly co-star's testicles and arse-hole in his face - much to the embarassment of the star-spangled audience. It was a laugh. And so that was the Golden Globes, and it proves how much Americans still love a British accent.
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17.1.07 01:32 |
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Yr 2: Wk 67-68: California Cold Rush
Huge destructive storms, big bruvver racism, what's going on back in the uk? Over here we're still in deep freeze - there's no snow, not even a cloud, in California's central valley, but there is frost on the fruit, and the price of oranges and other citrus is going to rise dramatically as a result. Yes, yes I know that the storms in Europe are trashing coastlines and blowing trees all over the place, and yes I know that enormous ice storms across the rest of the US have brought states of emergency, but here in (still sunny) California we're having record low temperatures overnight. It's still nice in the daytime, but first thing in the morning it's a bit nippy, brrrr. And blimey, I don't know how I'll cope with having to pay a bit more for my tangerines. Seriously though, it's even made the BBC world service news, the citrus crop could be utterly destroyed, as well as other crops - avocadoes, for example - and this has a knock-on effect on the state's economy. California is one of the most important agricultural bread-baskets of the US, and we just aint used to this sort of weather. Even in southern California they have been getting flurries of snow in the hills above Malibu. They're making snowmen in LA. But it's been so dry in most of California that there is the additional risk of wildfire, especially with the high cold winds. So, since I've come here, we've had the heaviest rain on record, the hottest summer on record, and now the coldest winter on record. Bloody hell. And this sort of thing is going on all over the planet. I heard that in Russia they are having one of the warmest winters they've ever had. Last year at the same time was one of the coldest. Tornadoes in Kensal Rise. Yesterday Stephen Hawking said that the threat of global warming and its knock-on effects has brought humanity that little bit closer to doomsday. I think it's about time we took this climate change thing a little bit more seriously, or I might have to give up eating oranges altogether. |
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18.1.07 20:51 |
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lethal water, fake guns, falling trees
Did you hear about that woman who died from drinking too much water? It was about a week ago, a woman in Sacramento was taking part in a competition organized by a local radio station in which contestants had to drink as much water as possible without going to the toilet for a wee. Believe it or not, it was actually to win a Wii - one of them new Nintendo things. She didn't win, but when she got home she collapsed and died - her body was over-saturated and over-hydrated. Well, the radio show has been cancelled, and the poor family are looking at their legal options. Blimey. Speaking of local news, my own building made it onto the news today. Shortly before lunch, we were told to close our office doors, because there was someone with a gun in the building. Yep, not the words you most want to hear. Still, it got everyone excited. I was looking about for escape routes and stuff, and the police locked down the building, not letting anyone in or out (good job I brought a packed lunch). Then it was said he'd gone over to another part of campus, and the swat teams were everywhere, and we all thought about, well, you can imagine. It turned out to be nothing much really, and it seems the gun - a rifle - was fake, and nobody was threatened or hurt. A moment of excitement in the day. Check out the reports here and here though. And then I look at the news back in Britain, the news of that deadly storm, and all of those trees lying on top of cars all over the place. And then I see this photo, of a huge tree crushing several cars in Highgate, and it turns out to be right outside where we used to live, in Hornsey Lane! I lived yards from that tree. If it had gone in a different direction, splat. A scary thought. With all these storms and stuff, I hope everyone out there that I know is safe and sound. It's a dangerous place, planet earth. |
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19.1.07 07:40 |
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a long time ago in denmark
watercolour, pen, done last night while i was feeling stressed and looking at old pics from my european travels; i've been to denmark three times: 1995, 1998, 2000. In 95 I picked strawberries for a whole summer in the sunny south of Fyn. Crikey, I was 19, it was an adventure. Sleeping in a tiny tent on a farm; hitch-hiking everywhere. I learnt dansk with a funny yokel faaborg accent, i busked with a group of fellow jordbaerplukkers just to buy teabags and nutella from netto, i loved all the ferries you had to take to get anywhere. I ended up in copenhagen, penniless, singing songs by The Jam in a karaoke bar. I went around europe in 98, on a five-week inter-rail odyssey, and I went back to denmark, to copenhagen and to aarhus (in the middle of aarstreet). I was disappointed to find that the special ferries onto which the trains rolled back and forth had gone, replaced by long-spanning bridges. I stayed with some danish friends, met a roadsweeper, a bassist who was big in greenland, and a jockey who said she knew lester piggott. And I was back again in 2000 with mr tel, when we saw hamlet's castle, played pool in the independent hippy state of christiania, met an american tourist we called spitting joe (he spat on the pavement 49 times in ten minutes, no lie, we actually counted), and i lost my favourite blue celio shirt from belgium in a hostel. Denmark's a great place.
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24.1.07 05:47 |
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jolly green giants and ray-guns
I've been sick this week, so haven't been up for commenting on el presidente's latest big speech (state of the onion, or something, apparently he learnt some new big words). So he wants to be green king george? I heard a soundbite of him saying, on the prospect of using simple crops to make fuel, along the lines of "we grow grass on the ranch, hell that means we're in the energy business now!" Now george, I gotta say, pissoff mate, who are you kidding? In the energy business now? You're in the frigging oil business, you're already in the energy business, don't play the friendly green cowboy with us.
The other bit of news I enjoyed reading this week was the new ray-gun that the US has developed. Apparently it projects an invisible and non-lethal beam of heat - microwaves, actually - that can make life very uncomfortable for the enemy. Microwaves, now hang on, is that not radiocative warfare? Anyway, it is designed to make enemies give up under the terrible pressure of this heat. It heats the skin of anyone in its path to a whopping 50 degrees C!!! 120 degrees F!!! Yeah, that's hot. But hang on, it gets that hot in Vegas. It gets nearly that hot in Davis. Will that be effective in the wars we're currently trying to engage in? Enemies who are used to living in desert conditions and temperatures? Yes, another god-knows-how-many-millions of dollars well spent. Still, we could use it to grow crops in the winter, thus solving the fuel issue, thus solving all the world's problems, eh george! |
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28.1.07 21:19 |
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stone the crows
watercolour, micron pigma 01 pen; a crisp january afternoon, we have had a lot of sunshine, but yesterday a few clouds finally came, and even a very tiny drop of rain (i saw a headline on the san francisco chronicle, "at last a break from the sun", not the sort of thing you hear in january is it). I went for a post-revenge-of-the-sith cycle today and painted this, nearby where i live, outside the edges of davis. There was a large murder of crows gathered for a moot in the field, more like a brown-bag lunch, bring your own dead mouse, eat some of the seeds in the soil. God knows what they were raven on about. By the way, this is the 400th entry on this blog... |
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29.1.07 03:01 |
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meanwhile, back at the bike barn
watercolour, pen, another one of the bike barn at uc davis, done during the end of my lunchbreak today. I made chicken soup last night, using the carcass of the sunday roast, messy but lovely, and i had some for lunch today. So this is dedicated to chicken soup. It comes out funny in the scan, but that's no excuse, I underblued the sky, and I overgreened the grass. The students are cycling to class, or ambling away from a midterm, "like, y'know, whatever", the professors are striding to lecture halls with large confidence-boosting coffees, the staff are, well this one's drawing everyone else |
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31.1.07 07:44 |
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